Food cooking and eating – stories and ideas from a passionate foodie

Well, the last post for this year, anyway. I’ve got a feeling we will return…

We stayed at a splendid but small cottage. One bed, big bathroom with separate shower, cosy living room, and tiny kitchen. That’s usually not a problem, of course. It was well designed from a caravan style point of view, but almost too much kit so storing anything meaningful, or prepping food as well as cooking it – a bit more difficult!

it looks like a wardrobe…

But you do ‘cut your cloth’, don’t you? We found the local posh supermarket. You readers in the north of England will know it well. Booth’s is like a cross between Waitrose, and the best of The Co-op plus Sainsbury. We were able to get ready-mades (salad, potato salad with gherkins, home cooked ham and the like) from a section marked ‘local produce’. It was in the main from very local farms and felt wonderfully amateur. The labels were done on address labels on a home printer, for example. We met this again on our travels – ice cream at a National Trust site. The delivery man asked us if we liked the ice cream. We wondered why. It was his own – and the best before dates were written in biro on the bottom of the packs! I like that style – proper local-ism, with excellent food prepared with love and care. It is a bit like the ‘cheating’ book written by Saint Delia. There’s a time and a place for full on cooking – but not on holiday.

but it is a kitchen!

It worked – we ate well both in and out on this holiday. Our landlady had also left us with some eggs, two cucumbers and some lovely tomatoes from their garden. You can’t really beat it, can you?